The administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and other top SBA officials were among those at Iona College in New Rochelle on Dec. 8 for meetings on SBA programs including the new Community Navigator Pilot Program, which is funding a program that involves Iona’s Hynes Institute for Entrepreneurship & Innovation.
The $100 million Community Navigator Pilot Program was established as part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and provides grants to fund programs that assist small businesses hit hard by the pandemic.
SBA officials on hand at Iona included: Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman; Mark Madrid, associate administrator in the Office of Entrepreneurial Development; Diedra Henry-Spires, senior adviser for Covid programs; Shalei Holway, senior adviser in the Office of Entrepreneurial Development; and Marlene Cintron, Region 2 administrator.
A $5 million grant was authorized for Syracuse University”™s Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF) to conduct a two-year program supporting veteran and military spouse businesses. Syracuse University selected Iona’s Hynes Institute to partner with it in the program. Christoph Winkler is the founding director of the Hynes Institute.
The program is intended to provide entrepreneurship education, small business technical assistance, loan preparation, access to capital, networking and more.
“The Small Business Administration has adapted dramatically during Covid just as our small businesses have,” Guzman said. “One of the main things we recognized is that during Covid connection was key, being able to connect quickly to resources to be able to position your business for survival.”
Guzman said that the Community Navigator Pilot Program allows the agency to build bridges to underserved communities so that they can reconnect to federal, state and local resources and be provided with the support networks that they need to survive.
“The Navigator Program is going to level up our resources partner network by connecting entrepreneurs to the great content and the capital and the government contracting opportunities and the trade opportunities that the SBA presents to small businesses on a regular basis,” Guzman said. “We are so pleased that Syracuse University chose to partner with Iona and focus on our military veterans and military spouses as well and their entrepreneurial pursuits. That’s a population that is really important to us at the federal government and across the country as they have served our nation and now are serving in their communities as business owners, risk-takers.”
Guzman recalled that small business entrepreneurship has been part of her life from childhood, having grown up working in her father’s veterinary hospital business “learning the grit and determination it takes to start a business and not only that but just the impact they have on local neighborhoods.”
Seamus Carey, the president of Iona College, said, “This program is really special to us because we get to serve people who serve us and that’s a unique combination that makes it really exciting to see what we can do.”
New Rochelle’s Mayor Noam Bramson characterized small businesses as the backbone of the local and national economies and noted that New Rochelle has more than 1,500 veteran households.
“The intersection of these two groups is, I think, such an appropriate place for us to focus our energies,” Bramson said. “No groups are more deserving of our support and, of course, all of us benefit when veteran entrepreneurs have every opportunity to succeed.”
